Welcome to pet battling. I understand taking up pets during a dry spell in the game; I started during the long, long drought of 5.4 myself. It fills a gap very nicely, and becomes a pleasant hobby in its own right.

1. Yes, the experience bonus boosts stack. You can use Safari Hat, Pet Treat, and Lesser Pet Treat all together during the XP bonus event, and they all stack very nicely.

2. Yes, the PWS used to have Whirlpool and Geyser in separate slots, which gave rise to the "Howlbomb" strategy. The devs nerfed that in Legion, because Howlbomb had become the preferred strategy for far too many battles.

What are some other easy pet trainers to battle against with carry pets. I do hit up Ashlie everyday in Shadowmoon Valley with my lvl 25 Mechanical Pandean Dragon and a carry, but beyond that not really any others using a carry pet.

You usually get to lvl 25 from 1 in 2 battles with the Safari hat. It seems to take me at least 3 to 4 using only 1 carry pet in my group battling Ashlie.

Here's a couple of bits and pieces, some already mentioned. And (of course) welcome to Pet Thrashing!

(Not figuring Rare/Not Rare)

1. Safari Hat ... no brainer
2. Every day, use a low level and take it to Ashlei
3. Every Tuesday Morning, start your Battlemasters, and get your 10 Stones.
4. Look at the schedule and see when Squirt is on
5. Every couple of months or so there is a Pet Battle Bonus Week (more on this later)

If you do this right, Ashlei will take your pet from 1 to 12 with Safari Hat on. I never used any other bonus here ... I have this dumb thought that it is a waste of Pet Charms.

On Tuesday, you use the 10 Stones from the Battlemasters Quest and your pet is now 22 ... and you only need to spend 9 Pet Charms now to get to 25.

The rest of the week, you can have 6 pets leveled up to 12, and you also have 3 Stones from the Alliance Quest and 3 Stones from the Horde Quest (if you have the Menagerie at Level 3 and your characters are 100). with 3 and 3, you now have 2 pets at 15, or one at 18 ... meaning less Pet Charms used.

Squirt is the big one here ... when she's on, I recommend throwing away the whole day and get as many fights on as you can and level ... everything. I bombed out one time and with the Safari Hat and a lucky Bonus Pet Battle Week together, and got almost 1000 levels for all my Green Characters (had no whites or grays by that time), and it left me only needing less than a 1000 to get all my characters to 25. At the time I had over 200 pets that needed at least ... yep, you got it!

Squirt, with the Safari Hat, can take Level 1 to 14/15 and on a 2nd fight all the way to 21/22 .. and this means less Pet Charms to use to finish it off.

Thus, my only suggestion is ... create a small sequence, that benefits the leveling of the pets and saves you Pet Charms, because when you are leveling them, you do not have enough Pet Charms for it all, specially if you have to buy the Blue Stones at 15 Pet Charms a pop.

IF, you have 110 characters on your account, and I hope that you take them up as you can, the big advantage is that after your first one, all of them can do the Pet Battles ... and now you look at the map after 8AM (PST - West Coast time), and see that blahandblah gives 14 Pet Charms, and you take all your characters, one at a time to go do that fight ... thus, with 6 characters you could get 84 Pet Charms in one day ... for example.

A couple of details ... the pets for Squirt is critically important. Of all the wolves only one of them can do the trick, and I think it's the P/S one ... the others take too much damage and do not get to the Howl portion. Even then, Dibbs can get a critical strike every so often, and you have to re-start the fight. Squirt wins these probably 10 to 15% of the time, if you do not make mistakes and you pay attention to the details.

Ashlei is the fun one, because the toy does not fight ... and the strategy is to allow the pet a few hits onto the toy, and close out the fight with the others ... or you can be mean, and figure out other strategies ... in mine, the nasty never even gets into the fight at all ... and dies at the same time as the toy. Bingo ... new pet Level 12.

The Murloc's in Azsuna are also good for a Level 1, but the timing is critical here, as you switch back and forth, so you do not take the bomb from the next one, that can hurt the fight. Two Rapana Whelks are recommended here ... one of the few Pets that you want to double up on, albeit, the new strategy at the Wailing Caverns, means I have to go get me 3 doubles of a different kind to cover the needs ... no biggie.

There is an article about which type of pet to get in Legion, and generally it fits the same for all the pets, but some doubles are worth it ... for example, I have 2 Iron Starlettes, 2 Unborn Val'kyrs and they are different, and come in handy depending on what you need ... a bigger shot, or just one more shot. The Striders and some other aquatic's are also handy doubled up, but not always necessary, unless you do not have another similar pet to cover.

But in general, as you increase your number of pets, at least ... be AWARE of their type ... and look at the related possibilities when you look at all their types ... left number is power and right number is speed ... and in some cases you want speed, and other cases power ... so you learn to use your pets better.

After I got my 650 pets all Rare and 25, I did a thorough look at all the abilities and I ended up removing about 25 pets and getting a different kind, and this helped fix all the rabbits, frogs and such ... whose abilities were in the middle and not quite as efficient as they needed to be.

Hope this helps ... I'm sure others can comment and add/subtract to this

As I also level my alts through pet battling I don't use pet stones and just stick with hitting all the Pandaria tamers + 1 wild battle, which reliably levels 2 pets a day from 1-25 plus nets a lot of xp for my alt toons as well.

Question 2
Did the Panderan Water Spirit used to be able to use whirlpool and gyser separately ? I see a lot of strats from years ago that have those 2 abilities used as combos during a match.

1. Yes. Works best on squirt days. Pet battle in garrison which works really well on pet battle week for leveling pets. Throw on safari hat and food buffs for fairly quick leveling on one spot just repeating the same battle over and over.

These are the pet tamers I find the easiest to carry on( don't know all the tamer names so I'll give location):
Of course Ashlie,
the wolf tamer in horde area in wod frostridge put carry in first then blingtron and son of anomis finish it off for me.
Tamer in the vale in mop put carry in first and anbisol idol usually can solo the team keep a moth in third slot or anything strong against aquatic just in case rng can be a bitch.
Tamer in jade forest a dragon works well here can take out first two or nearly , then a moth to dodge the turtles one attack it does with cacoon. Bring in carry after you dodge then bring back moth to finish off using cacoon to dodge as need be.
Tamer on island near the shadow pan in mop. I use spine claw to take down first 2, bring in carry to take sleep from third, bring in moth to dodge then finish off.

These are the easiest to beat with low level carry as you get better and more pets leveled near every tamer can be beaten with a carry pet just sometimes the carry pet needs to be a bit higher sometimes level 10 or 15 so it can take a hit or so but near every tamer can carry a pet to some degree.
It is a great way to level Alts as you plop them in front of a tamer and long on once a day to do pet battle. Levels pets and Alts this way all the time.

Milotha wrote:1. Yes. Works best on squirt days. Pet battle in garrison which works really well on pet battle week for leveling pets. Throw on safari hat and food buffs for fairly quick leveling on one spot just repeating the same battle over and over..

They nerfed those into the ground though, didn't they? They didn't want people doing that anymore.

Milotha wrote:2. Yes, the two abilities were swapped, ruining all those old strats.

Thanks for all the replies, they have helped out. So far I have had a pretty good bonus week leveling pets.

Help me understand something though. Two days ago in the Menagerie the pet battle was Deebs, Tryi, and Puzzle. I ran up about 8 pets to level 25 there one morning as it was yielding full XP after the fight (the gold from Puzzle is a nice little bonus too). After that the other 2 fights have been yielding very little XP, like 290. I thought yesterday it was because it was only 2 boars but today it is 3 pet fight and it is the same thing. What gives?

Theejackal wrote:Help me understand something though. Two days ago in the Menagerie the pet battle was Deebs, Tryi, and Puzzle. I ran up about 8 pets to level 25 there one morning as it was yielding full XP after the fight (the gold from Puzzle is a nice little bonus too). After that the other 2 fights have been yielding very little XP, like 290. I thought yesterday it was because it was only 2 boars but today it is 3 pet fight and it is the same thing. What gives?

Regardless of the enemy team composition, experience from all of the Menagerie battles was nerfed towards the end of WoD. Only the Squirt battle awards a decent amount of pet experience.

Peanutty wrote:
As I also level my alts through pet battling I don't use pet stones and just stick with hitting all the Pandaria tamers + 1 wild battle, which reliably levels 2 pets a day from 1-25 plus nets a lot of xp for my alt toons as well.

Be careful with that process under Legion. Mind you for those of you out there dozens of Alts, this is a good strategy.

But when I returned to WoW last month I only had one main account at level 100 and I leveled her about 75% through pet battles. When I got her to 110 I couldn't do any of the Legion Pet battles (didn't have the Rep) and I had the suckiest of armor yet all the monsters on Broken Isle leveled to 110 like me. My priest was doomed.

Luckily I had a Hunter at level 98. I got her up to 100 and then I forced myself to only quest until 110. My hunter is now my primary account in Legion and has the armor (plus a beefy bear tank) to survive. She has the rep to get the Legion Pet Battles too.

I save my priest for older pet battles, she's the only one with Pet Menagerie 3.

Peanutty wrote:
As I also level my alts through pet battling I don't use pet stones and just stick with hitting all the Pandaria tamers + 1 wild battle, which reliably levels 2 pets a day from 1-25 plus nets a lot of xp for my alt toons as well.

Be careful with that process under Legion. Mind you for those of you out there dozens of Alts, this is a good strategy.

Yes I would only advise doing this on alts and I would also advise on making sure you pick up your artifact weapon before you begin as gear scaling really hurts alts that are leveled strictly on pet battling (I waited until 106 to pick up an artifact weapon on my DK, who'd only done pet battles... yeah, it was a MASSIVE struggle).

Most of my alts now level from 100 to 110 through a combination of pet battling and legion assault/invasions. Very fast and reliable and once you hit 110, continue hitting easier legion assault points to get nethershards for gear (the vendor will sell to you even if you don't open Broken Shore) and to pick up additional WQ gear rewards, order resources, etc.

One thing I didn't see mentioned is that you can buy an epic level up stone from the vendor in New Dalaran (current Legion Dalaran). I forget exactly which, but just go in and check it out.

The stones go for 45 pet charms (I believe) but will level a pet all the way to 25. Considering that there are some very easy pet battles in Legion if you have the right pets, you can amass charms very quickly; esp if you have alts.

I wouldn't say this is the most efficient method, but at some point you'll start to have an excess of charms most likely, and this is a good way to conveniently level pets in my opinion.

Peanutty wrote:
As I also level my alts through pet battling I don't use pet stones and just stick with hitting all the Pandaria tamers + 1 wild battle, which reliably levels 2 pets a day from 1-25 plus nets a lot of xp for my alt toons as well.

Be careful with that process under Legion. Mind you for those of you out there dozens of Alts, this is a good strategy.

But when I returned to WoW last month I only had one main account at level 100 and I leveled her about 75% through pet battles. When I got her to 110 I couldn't do any of the Legion Pet battles (didn't have the Rep) and I had the suckiest of armor yet all the monsters on Broken Isle leveled to 110 like me. My priest was doomed.

Luckily I had a Hunter at level 98. I got her up to 100 and then I forced myself to only quest until 110. My hunter is now my primary account in Legion and has the armor (plus a beefy bear tank) to survive. She has the rep to get the Legion Pet Battles too.

I save my priest for older pet battles, she's the only one with Pet Menagerie 3.

Timewalking helps with this issue if you can wait it out. Your gear gets scaled down, so being behind isn't so bad.